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Okay, that was pretty obvious, but sometimes using the obvious is the best way to go.

Warning bells always go off for reviewers when the studios, in this case Paramount and MTV Films, decide at the last minute to cancel all preview screenings of a movie and opt to send their baby into the cold world alone and unprotected by shills and quote whores. Plus, in this case, I couldn’t get thoughts of Halle Berry and the Oscar and then “Catwoman” out of my head.

My first thought about “Aeon Flux” was that it could become the “Logan’s Run” of the new millennium, but it isn’t bad in the right way. It’s just inept and lazy and careless and cheap. Bad combination.

Charlize Theron, who I used to think was a gorgeous lightweight before “Monster,” is the title character. And she comes across as a gorgeous lightweight. Maybe she just doesn’t give more than the script demands. But another Oscar winner, Frances McDormand, is in this, too, and she’s even less interested in the role of Aeon’s Handler.

And her hair. Holy jeez, where did that come from? You know those close-up reaction shots you see in silent comedies, where someone is frightened and his hair stands on end? That’s what I’m talking about here.

Okay, the film is set 400 years in the future, after a virus has wiped out all but about five million people who all live in one city and are ruled by the descendent of the man who cured the virus. He’s Trevor Goodchild (a somnambulistic Marton Csokas). But, as in all science fiction stories which derive their inspirations either from Roman history or “Star Wars,” the rulers are corrupt, egomaniacal, and yadda yadda yadda, so the rebels have to skulk around in shadows and plan how to bring about a return of yadda yadda yadda.

Aeon is an assassin whose assignment is to eliminate Goodchild. But there are great and mysterious secrets to be uncovered first, secrets which will change the course of human yadda yadda yadda.

I almost laughed over the opening action sequence wherein Aeon, with a total lack of emotion, kills about a half dozen guards. Then she finds out that the bad guys have killed her sister and we’re supposed to get all choked up about it. What about the guys Aeon slaughtered? They had families, too. I guess nobody should give a flux about them.

Sorry. Obvious joke number two.

Karyn Kusama directed, in a manner of speaking, and the absurd costume design is by Beatrix Aruna Pasztor. During that same early sequence Aeon goes tumbling into a room protected by lasers. She’s wearing skintight spandex, but suddenly produces a long rope. From where? The costume is so tight she certainly couldn’t have pulled it out of her ass.

And later we see Aeon waking from sleep and the nightgown thingy she’s wearing looks great on her but is tight around the throat. Who wears tight around the throat while sleeping?

Peter Chung, who created the Aeon Flux character and guided her through her animated incarnation on MTV in the mid-1990s, apparently had nothing to do with the movie. Maybe he’s dead, if he’s lucky. I don’t know. If he’s alive, hopefully he’s learned a lesson about what can happen when you’re not there to keep an eye on your possessions. He should have been like the shepherd, guarding his Flux by night.

Ha. Betcha didn’t see that one coming.

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link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=13522&reviewer=405
originally posted: 12/17/05 09:17:22
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